Long bursts more effective than multiple short ones?

[greybeard1]

Thank you Max!

I mentioned EAW just as an example.

I was wondering how IL-2 damage model isn't object of mods, like I often saw for other sims. Also, I would be curious to know where it is; I found inside flight model ("buttons") a section like that which follows:

[Toughness]
  AroneL 50
  AroneR 50
  CF 400
  Engine1 70
  Engine2 70
  Engine3 70
  Engine4 70
  GearL2 200
  GearR2 200
  Keel1 70
  Keel2 70
  Nose 100
  Oil 70
  Rudder1 70
  Rudder2 70
  StabL 100
  StabR 100
  Tail1 120
  Tail2 120
  Turret1B 100
  Turret2B 100
  Turret3B 100
  Turret4B 100
  Turret5B 100
  Turret6B 100
  VatorL 100
  VatorR 100
  WingLIn 120
  WingLMid 100
  WingLOut 100
  WingRIn 120
  WingRMid 100
  WingROut 100
  Flap01 100
  Flap02 100
  Flap03 100
  Flap04 100

is this related to the damage model?

Returning to the original question, I think two bullets on same spot gives same effects (given they've same energy and angle of impact) no matter the time interval. Probably, effectiveness of long bursts is a matter of hit probability, higher according to number of bullets fired. So it is more probable, for a long burst, that two or more projectiles land on same spot, making more damage.

Do you agree?

[MaxGunz]

Originally Posted by greybeard1

Thank you Max!

is this related to the damage model?

Question is also how related. You can poke values and try to attribute changes to those and still miss effects down the road. You can also go into the woods and randomly eat leaves, flowers and berries not seeing mold spores on some.

Returning to the original question, I think two bullets on same spot gives same effects (given they've same energy and angle of impact) no matter the time interval. Probably, effectiveness of long bursts is a matter of hit probability, higher according to number of bullets fired. So it is more probable, for a long burst, that two or more projectiles land on same spot, making more damage.

Do you agree?

Not completely. For one, hits that may be a hand span or less away from each other may hit different parts. For another between moving shooter, bullets and target the fire may walk while at other times it holds to an area for the next dozen or thirty hits but even those come from 6 or 8 different guns.
Yeah the chances go up then. The chances of bullets from different guns to hit the same part go up to.

Concentrated fire can work to hammer through both armor and thicker parts but the best results is when weaker critical parts get hit just once.

The pilot for instance. Also control cables which is rare but IL-2 models the effects of such damage. Or a fuel or oil line.

Those are all quicker kills than busting a spar let alone the structure of a tail wheel and the seat armor behind it. So I spend more shots fishing for a critical hit at angles to places where I know the weaker critical's live, hence deflection directly into the engine, wing root, cockpit.

[greybeard1]

I see. A WWI british ace said there was only one "paying" target on the whole plane and it was pilot's head. Likewise, a WWII US Navy report demonstrated how hits on engine and its fuel and oil circuits were main cause of aircraft loss.

Personally, I think aim is the core point: you can fire short or long bursts, but what really matters is how thy are aimed.

[MaxGunz]

They should be less than 1 second (pref 1/4 -1/2 sec) bursts aimed with lead deflection shots that the target flies through. 20 hits to the wrong spot is worth less than a single critical hit.

[Woke Up Dead]

I was flying a P40 vs 109G6s and I was getting kills by smoking their engines, putting holes in their wings, making them lose controls etc. The 109 pilots were doing their best to avoid my shots so I couldn't get more than a quarter-secon burst in at a time. Many of them took a lot of hits and still kept flying, I was content with letting them go to let them slowly "bleed to death" on their way back to base.

Near the end of the map I caught one pilot unaware, and got a long (one whole second) burst in from a nice angle right at convergence, and he blew up the way that Zeros or 30mm cannon victims sometimes blow up, not a typical 50cal kill vs a decently armored plane like the 109G6. This is what first made me think that perhaps long bursts may be more effective than short ones, even if the short bursts end up getting more hits overall.

Occasionally I get similar results in the lightly armed Yak-9: I can expend all my ammo on a 109, get lots of hits and cripple him by pecking away with short bursts, but a single long burst will make him go pop sometimes.

[MaxGunz]

Those planes carried oxygen as well as fuel.

[Laurwin]

Fuel tanks could also ignite from multiple hits.

With bombers exploding from hits, this could happen from the bombload being ignited. Explosion would be spectacular... and dangerous.

Often happened vs nightfighters because of the angle of the Schräge Musik cannons.

In principle greybeard is about right, I think. There was an American training video made by Disney, to US Naval aviators in WW2. It's on youtube. And most importanltly it was narrated by the infamous John Thach. He is the tactical innovator behind the Thach Weave manouver.

Thach recommends in the video, to always aim for the frontal engine (vs an enemy fighter aircraft). Unless that is, you can confidently pop some bullets directly into the cockpit of the enemy.

The reasoning being, that once you have solid aiming point in the engine, first bullets, even if only a few of them, will hit the vulnerable engine. Any engine will lose performance, once damaged, I think.

Other bullets in the burst will sweep across the other vulnerable parts such as the cockpit. The only reliably effective cockpit armor vs heavy machine guns or cannons, is armor steel or titanium. Neither of which, exist to protect the pilot in the plexiglass canopy, out of which the pilot is observing the world around him.
Yes, the radial engine would act as sort of armor, blocking shots from the front, to the pilot. But engine might get knocked and lose power so it's not exactly a win-win scenario here...

Oftentimes there would be fuel stores just in the centerline fuselage, behind the cockpit. (such arrangement exist in me109 and fw190, also spitfires for the Allies)

Basically when you hit the engines with a good solid burst, you will have a chance of damaging any of the following three: engine, pilot, internal fuel tanks.

You can also damage the control surfaces more to rear, the tailplane, if it was a longer burst.

Although despite Thach's advice about aiming, it was also specifically very effective to aim for the wingroots of A6M zeroes, as they had vulnerable fuel stores there (of course every respectable IL-2 player knows this already!)

[IceFire]

Originally Posted by Woke Up Dead

I was flying a P40 vs 109G6s and I was getting kills by smoking their engines, putting holes in their wings, making them lose controls etc. The 109 pilots were doing their best to avoid my shots so I couldn't get more than a quarter-secon burst in at a time. Many of them took a lot of hits and still kept flying, I was content with letting them go to let them slowly "bleed to death" on their way back to base.

Near the end of the map I caught one pilot unaware, and got a long (one whole second) burst in from a nice angle right at convergence, and he blew up the way that Zeros or 30mm cannon victims sometimes blow up, not a typical 50cal kill vs a decently armored plane like the 109G6. This is what first made me think that perhaps long bursts may be more effective than short ones, even if the short bursts end up getting more hits overall.

Occasionally I get similar results in the lightly armed Yak-9: I can expend all my ammo on a 109, get lots of hits and cripple him by pecking away with short bursts, but a single long burst will make him go pop sometimes.

The key thing here is grouping shots in the same spot on the target. So a long burst (2-3 seconds) is effective so long as you're hitting the target and you are hitting in the same relative area. I've seen people spray bullets all over their target and complain that plane X is too strong... but really its the technique. A dozen .50cal shots hitting both wing tips, main wing sections, a bit into the fuselage and a few into the tail might cause something significant to fail... but really not all that much. Put the same number of shots into the engine and you might see the plane explode completely.

Short or long burst... aimed effective gunnery will always be better than just spraying the entire target. Which is why your 109 target blew to pieces

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by MaxGunz

Those planes carried oxygen as well as fuel.

Oxygen systems were generally low pressure and oxygen cylinders (or globes) were small. That meant that a hit to a pressurized O2 container would do some secondary damage, but not enough to blow the plane apart in the same way that an explosive hit to a partially full gas tank, bomb or ammo magazine would.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Laurwin

With bombers exploding from hits, this could happen from the bombload being ignited. Explosion would be spectacular... and dangerous.

Fuel-air explosions could also be spectacular, but that required AvGas vapor plus O2 rich air, plus a spark. To prevent this, aircraft fuel tanks are (and were) blanketed with CO2 - usually cooled engine exhaust.

To get a fuel tank to blow up, you need a strong primary explosion to vaporize and heat the fuel while exposing it to air, or you need prior damage which allows air to get into the system or fuel to leak from the tank and vaporize.

So, in some cases, a "long" burst might be more effective at setting a plane's fuel systems on fire since the first hits tear open the fuel tank, letting air in and splashing the fuel around to vaporize it, then subsequent hits provide the spark or explosive heat needed for the vaporized fuel to explode rather than burn.